


Routine Cleaning and Cataloguing

by fenellaevangela



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demonic Possession, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/pseuds/fenellaevangela
Summary: An archaeologist accidentally summons an ancient demon.





	Routine Cleaning and Cataloguing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_la_grecque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_la_grecque/gifts).



> I'm not an archaeologist but I sure as heck used every scrap of archaeological terminology I know for this fic. Sorry if I messed up anything obvious!
> 
> Details regarding the archive warning at the end of the fic.

“Shit - _shit!_ ”

“Are you quite all right, Joseph?”

The young man spun around and Dimitri spotted, with dismay, a haphazard pile of potsherds on the ground next to the table instead of a tidy pile on _top_ of it.

“Professor Smyth!” Joseph stammered, eyes going comically wide. “It’s nothing! I mean, I’m fine. I was just, um . . .”

“Dropping the day’s specimens on the floor?” Dimitri suggested.

Joseph’s shoulders slumped. It was his first time out in the field for an actual dig and Dimitri could tell that he was worried it would be his last. “I’m really sorry, sir. I don’t think any of them have been damaged, and I’ll sort them out again, I promise.” He looked at Dimitri with pleading eyes. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“You most certainly will,” Dimitri agreed. “And until then you can stick to cleaning and organizing the brushes and picks; _I_ will take care of this.”

With an air of defeat, the young man nodded meekly and left the tent.

Dimitri sighed as he surveyed the scene. The mishap wasn’t serious, but Joseph’s carelessness was disappointing and reorganizing the potsherds would be tedious work – the sort of work Dimitri hired grad students to do _for_ him, not create more of. But it wasn’t going to get done unless he started, so he rolled up his shirt sleeves and took out a pair of work gloves. Fortunately, the potsherds weren’t particularly delicate and Dimitri wasn’t concerned about irreparable damage. He was more worried that Joseph may have mixed up specimens from different parts of the site and Dimitri would have to go through the daily log with a fine-toothed comb to set things right.

Except . . . 

Dimitri sat back from his work, perplexed. Clearly the potsherds weren’t likely from different parts of the site; they didn’t even look like they were from different pieces of pottery. Placed out flat across the table a clear pattern was visible in the grooves and paint decorating the potsherds, suggesting that they were originally part of an individual whole. What really surprised Dimitri was that it seemed, in fact, that the entire pot – a shallow bowl, really – was present. Reaching out to fit the final segment into its place, Dimitri wondered how long it would have taken him to notice the quality of this find if Joseph’s mishap hadn’t brought it to his attention. He really had been too brusque with him; it was Joseph’s first real error and he _had_ been more than willing to fix it. Perhaps, Dimitri thought, there was some way to make it up to him –

As the edge of the final segment brushed against its neighbours a bright light suddenly filled the tent and Dimitri was jolted back from the table. Momentarily stunned, by the time his mind caught up with what was happening the tent appeared to be filled with a thin grey smoke and the taste of ash was on his tongue. At first Dimitri thought, absurdly, that the potsherds had somehow ignited. 

What had actually happened was even more incomprehensible.

As the archaeologist watched, transfixed, the smoke coalesced into a nearly-solid figure before him. It was hard to look at, Dimitri’s eyes straining to focus on the tendrils of smoke twisting and spinning in on themselves, but he could make out long limbs and an eerily featureless head.

A sound like fingernails on a chalkboard filled the tent. “HMMM . . .”

What? Dimitri wanted to ask. How? The questions stuck in his throat. 

“IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I’VE SEEN ONE OF YOU,” the thing said. Dimitri felt, rather than saw, the figure peering down at him where he sat. It reached out a hand that wasn’t a hand, the smoke slipping over the skin of Dimitri’s cheek as light as air. “HUMAN.”

Dimitri screamed at himself to move, run, _flee_ , but nothing could get through the wall of sheer terror that lay between his mind and his body. He felt frozen in place as the phantom touch brushed over his lips and down the column of his neck, the stinging smoke engulfing his whole body until Dimitri could barely breathe over the smell of ash. He had a brief premonition of himself dying like this, choking on acrid smoke in a dingy tent, but just as his chest began to feel too tight the thing startled him by backing away abruptly. Desperate, Dimitri gulped down breath after breath of fresh air; it was such a relief that he only belatedly realized that the thing had started to speak.

“ \- AND THESE THINGS ARE ALWAYS MORE FUN WITH TWO,” it said. “SHOULD WE INVITE YOUR FRIEND TO PLAY?”

Dimitri couldn’t understand what the thing meant until the figure turned its unsettlingly smooth face towards the fabric flap that served as the tent’s door. Dimitri realized that there was a voice coming from outside the tent, although it sounded far away as if he was hearing it in a dream. He thought he should say something, warn whoever it was to stay back, but again the words wouldn’t come.

“Sorry, Professor, I just -” Joseph halted abruptly as he entered the tent. Because of course it was Joseph, the young man contrite but still too ambitious to let his poor impression stand. Dimitri willed him to turn around and leave before something awful happened – whatever the creature did would be terrible, Dimitri knew. It was too late.

Dimitri barely had enough time to force out a clipped, “No!” – the word feeling like it was being ripped from his throat – before the figure became an insubstantial wisp of smoke and swirled towards young man. 

Whether Joseph was too stunned to react or if he could even _see_ the entity that Dimitri could barely accept was real, it was impossible to tell. All Dimitri knew was that the other man put up no resistance as the tendrils of smoke wrapped round his arms and legs, the grey haze obscuring him from view until his face was all Dimitri could see. Then, with a suddenness that made Dimitri gasp, the smoke converged on Joseph’s eyes. An impossible amount of it seemed to pour into them until the younger man looked back at him with blank eyes the colour of ash.

“ _OH_ ,” said the hissing thing inside of Joseph. “YOU SHOULD SEE THE _THOUGHTS_ THIS ONE HAS ABOUT YOU. DO YOU THINK ABOUT HIM, TOO? ”

Dimitri’s heart clenched. He shook his head.

“HMM, THAT’S A SHAME,” the thing said, but it didn’t seem disappointed. Instead, Joseph’s face smiled. It was a creeping, insidious grin; it looked wrong on the young man’s face.

Before Dimitri even realized that the thing was moving, it had crossed the small room and was pulling Dimitri out of his chair. Dimitri stumbled forward and he grabbed at Joseph’s arms for support, unthinking, until he gained his footing and looked up to find Joseph’s face barely a hairsbreadth away from his. In as much as Dimitri had ever noticed Joseph’s stature he had thought the two of them were more or less of a height; now, with Joseph’s blank eyes so close Dimitri could make out the swirling texture of the smoke, Dimitri felt like the younger man was towering over him. He didn’t like it.

Joseph’s face smirked. “ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT HIM NOW?”

Dimitri couldn’t find the words to respond, even if he thought his voice would cooperate. Not that the thing was waiting for his answer. Dimitri gasped as it leaned across the remaining distance and pressed Joseph’s mouth hot against his lips. In an instant its tongue was in Dimitri’s mouth; the thing kissed sloppily, hungrily – Dimitri couldn’t tell if it was simply lack of skill that that made the thing move so roughly or if it was pure animal fervour. He just knew that this wasn’t how he wanted – not that he _wanted_ -

Dimitri let out a startled yelp. Forced backward by the aggression of the thing’s attentions, the back of his knees had banged into the very table where all of this absurdity had started. Dimitri could hear the potsherds rattle in their places on the table, and with each rattle he noticed the grip of Joseph’s hands on his arms seemed to stutter. Struck with a sudden idea, Dimitri pulled all of his strength together and allowed himself, with the thing’s next surge, to fall backwards.

There was a large clattering noise as Dimitri hit the table too hard and the potsherds laid out across it’s surface went skittering away in the opposite direction. The pot no longer sat, neatly reconstructed, in the middle of the table. Instead, it was scattered in two dozen pieces all over the tent.

The results were instantaneous. Joseph’s hold on Dimitri’s body – his clinging hands, his cloying mouth – fell away. A whirlwind of stinging smoke filled the room for a few suffocating moments and at first, once it was gone, Dimitri thought that he was alone in the tent. He was wrong.

Dimitri dropped to his knees next to the young man’s limp body. “Joseph? Joseph!” 

His voice was hoarse and his throat felt painfully dry, but Dimitri kept trying to wake the other man. He _had_ to be all right. He had to. God, if Joseph’s last conversation was a scolding from Dimitri the archaeologist didn’t know how he would handle that . . . Finally, after what had seemed an interminably long wait, Joseph’s eyes fluttered open. Dimitri felt his heartbeat skip before Joseph’s eyes focussed on him and he saw they were mercifully brown once again.

“Pro-professor?” Joseph asked. “What . . . ? I was having a dream. . .” 

“It’s all right,” Dimitri said, helping Joseph sit up. It was as much an attempt to convince himself as it was to reassure Joseph. He could barely wrap his mind around what had happened. “It’s over.”

He hoped it was over.

**Author's Note:**

> There's no sex in the fic. This is tagged as non-con because one of the men is possessed and the demon is physically using him to assault the other man.


End file.
